SpaceX announced Monday its plan to send two civilians on a trip around the moon in 2018, conjuring memories of America's space-faring heydey of the 1960s and '70s. NASA's Apollo missions captured the world's imagination, with Neil Armstrong taking "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on the Earth's biggest satellite July 20, 1969.

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Like NASA, SpaceX has plans to take a big leap to Mars some day. For now, it's following the path blazed by brave explorers half a century ago. Here's a look at some of the key moments in that journey.

NASA

Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong working at an equipment storage area on the lunar module. This is one of the few photos that show Armstrong during the moonwalk.

A challenge

A little more than a month after the Soviet Union put the first man in space, President John F. Kennedy delivered a challenge: Let's beat the Reds to the moon.

JFK was more eloquent than that, asking for funds and telling Congress "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

A start

The same year as Kennedy's speech, NASA's Ranger missions began to test technologies designed to take humans to the moon and beyond. The unmanned spacecraft were designed to crash into the moon after taking images, but the first six malfunctioned before Rangers 7, 8 and 9 successfully sent back photos.

A landing

No crash landing this time. On June 2, 1966, NASA's Surveyor 1 spacecraft became the first American probe to touch down on an extraterrestrial body with a soft landing on the moon. It landed after slowing itself from 6,000 miles per hour to 3 miles per hour before sending more than 11,000 images back to Earth and data concerning the environment over 30 days.

A tragedy

NASA's legendary Apollo missions began with one of the darkest moments in the history of American space travel. On Jan. 27, 1967 , a fire in the command module of Apollo 1 (then known as Apollo 204) took the lives of Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee during a pre-flight test. Tragic as the loss of life was, the ensuing investigation led to significantly enhanced safety in missions to come.

An orbit

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, reached orbit on Dec. 24, 1968. Over a 20-hour period, the crew made 10 circuits of the moon, tracking landmarks and landing sites and taking photos. The crew also sent transmissions homes that were telecast worldwide, including a holiday message saying "good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth."

A triumph

"The Eagle has landed." Those were the famous words when Apollo 11 landed on July 20, 1969, with Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin -- Command Module Pilot Michael Collins stayed in orbit. An estimated 530 million people watched Armstrong and Aldrin meet President Kennedy's challenge on television. The pair spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the surface.

An emergency

Apollo 13, a "successful failure," was intended to land on the moon, but an oxygen tank explosion during the flight put the crew's lives in danger. The drama following Jim Lovell's famous declaration of "Houston, we've had a problem here" made for one of the most remarkable stories in space exploration -- one with a happy ending, too. Incredible problem-solving work by mission control and the astronauts themselves got the crew home.

An ending?

Apollo 17 touched down Dec. 11, 1972, with astronauts collecting 243 pounds of material and even driving a rover around the surface during a 75-hour stay. It was humanity's last manned landing on the moon. With two more people on track to get an up-close look next year -- and NASA thinking about Mars -- maybe it will spark a new passion for space travel that we haven't seen in nearly 50 years.